Poetry: An Ode to the Forest

The groves were God’s first temples.

Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down.
His simple heart
Could not resist the sacred influences,
Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,
From the gray old trunks mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once
All their green tops, stole over his spirit.

Ah, why
Should we, in the world’s riper years, neglect these ancient sanctuaries, and adore
Only among the crowd, and under roofs,
That our frail hands have raised?

Pay heed to the soft winds
That run along the summit of trees
In music; to the cooler breath
That from the inmost darkness comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground,
The fresh moist ground, are all instinct.

Here is continual worship.

Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades,
And to the beautiful order of the works
Learn to conform the order of our lives